The present (third) Whitney Court was built between 1898 and 1902 to the designs of the prize-winning architect T H Watson.

It was the joint creation of three well-connected people - whose Coats-of-Arms enrich the spectacular Great Hall heraldic ceiling (see illuminated Family Tree on Great Hall north wall shelf for explanation).

James L A Hope (1843-1904), was the grandson of Napoleonic War General, the 4th Earl of Hopetoun. His wife Eliza Coats (1855-1906) was the youngest daughter of Sir Peter Coats, joint founder of the great Scottish thread-making firm of J & P Coats (in 1912 the third largest firm in the world. Finally his mother, Lady Mary Nugent (1811-1904) was a famous 1830s beauty and youngest daughter of the 7th Earl of Westmeath, who laid the Foundation Stone of the new Court (look on right, just outside Drawing Room French Windows, for stone with her initials as a married woman - MFH).

Family portraits on display in the house include James L A Hope (to left of Large Drawing Room fireplace), Eliza Coats (on west wall of Large Drawing Room), Lady Mary Nugent in old age (north wall of Small Drawing Room); two beauties: Lady Mary as a young woman and her mother Lady Westmeath (North Room of the Coats Flat) and the 4th Earl of Hopetoun and Laurence Nugent Hope (son of James L A and Eliza Hope and grandfather the Court's present owner) in the First Floor Corridor.'

Earlier Whitney Courts - a Jacobean one, built with material from the mediaeval Whitney Castle and pulled down in 1820 and a 1735 Georgian structure, later enlarged with Jacobean materials, only to be pulled down after the present Court was built - had been sited close to the ever- encroaching River Wye. Last vestiges of the Jacobean building survive in the wooden Reredos behind the Altar in Whitney Church and Smoking Room panelling in the present Whitney Court.

The present Court is quite recent but Estate origins reach back fifteen centuries to the days of King Arthur and his Knights, to Saint Cynidr, a late 5th Century AD Welsh saint - the 500 acres of his local Hermitage lands, mentioned in Domesday Book as possessions of St Guthlac's Priory in Hereford, still form the nucleus of the Whitney Court Estate.

Whitney in medieval times was a near-independent Lordship, ruled by the de Whitneys (ancestors of Eli Whitney, inventor of the Cotton Gin - with his place in Cole Porter's famous song THEY ALL LAUGHED - and various celebrated American millionaires) and stayed in the hands of the de Whitneys and their descendents until sold to the Hope family in 1897.